2017

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Passport, the technology business for city transit systems, raises $43 million

PYMNTS

Passport, company that’s managing much of the technical aspects of how people pay to use public transportation resources in cities like London, Miami and Los Angeles, has just raised $43 million. The money, from Bain Capital Ventures, will go to help the company expand its payment and transaction services nationally and internationally. Read More.

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NEW REPORT: Can Western Union Leverage Its Heritage To Build A Better X-Border API?

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There was a time when the telegraph was as important to keeping people connected as the smartphone is today. And while the telegraph’s heyday may well be over, the network it once rested upon can still be put to good use, especially with an assist from API solutions. As more merchants and smaller businesses seek to engage in global commerce, several companies are stepping up their efforts to help merchants address the complexities presented by international trade.

B2B 108
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Blockchain Starts 2017 With A Bang

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Whether you believe the hype or not, blockchain technology is attracting massive investments, exploration and competition across the globe. In the last week alone, top players in the distributed ledger space have made progress in their own initiatives, from membership growth within blockchain consortia to the pursuit of distributed ledger-related patents by top banks.

B2B 99
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Big Data For Big Returns At Retailers Big And Small?

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“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”. That’s a quote from department store maven John Wanamaker, illustrating a conundrum for retailers (and merchants in general): Namely, you’ve got to reach out to consumers if you are going to convince them to buy your wares. But reaching out involves time and money — both precious commodities.

Retail 93
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Less Stress, More Success: Accounting Best Practices & Processes for 2025

Speaker: Amanda Adams, Fractional CFO, CPA

Are you ready to elevate your accounting processes for 2025? 🚀 Join us for an exclusive webinar led by Amanda Adams, a seasoned fractional CFO and CPA passionate about transforming back-office operations for finance teams. This session will cover critical best practices and process improvements tailored specifically for accounting professionals.

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The Wonder Of Wegmans

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Supermarkets aren’t generally the sorts of things that generate massive, dedicated fan bases. Certainly most shopper have a preferred grocery store (or at least one they tend to frequent more often than others) — but in general, it is not something most people talk all that often about since on the whole shopping for groceries doesn’t register all that highly on the excitement meter.

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eBay Mulling Accepting Bitcoin As A Payment Method

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Online retailer eBay , following in the footsteps of Overstock.com, is contemplating allowing bitcoin as a payment method. In an interview with Yahoo Finance , Scott Cutler, SVP of eBay Americas, said the eCommerce retailer is “seriously considering” accepting bitcoin payments but noted the company is “not quite there yet.” He noted that eBay is currently focused on the holiday shopping season, which is turning out to be a strong one for online retailers. .

Retail 88

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Chase Acquires WePay Payments Platform

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Can big banks be nimble of foot when it comes to FinTech? One giant — JPMorgan Chase & Co. — is taking some definitive steps on that stage. JPMorgan announced today (Oct. 17) it is acquiring payments platform WePay. The combination will create an ecosystem of platform developers and small businesses, powered by WePay’s ability to integrate payments functionality into software and fueled by Chase’s global reach, small business product portfolio and network of 4 million small businesses.

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UPS Hits Retailers With Holiday Shipping Fee Surprise

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With the holiday shopping season in full swing, retailers are facing a new challenge: extra shipping fees during the busiest weeks. The Wall Street Journal reports that United Parcel Service (UPS) is adding on a surcharge to packages shipped to homes around Black Friday and the week before Christmas in a move to compel retailers to send their orders outside those peak periods.

Retail 86
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Building A Faster, Safer Network On The Blockchain

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When it comes to business, it’s no secret the competition is fierce. But in an increasingly interconnected world, even competing companies need to collaborate. Rival banks and financial institutions (FIs) need to work together to serve customers and transfer money between banks. Car dealers need parts from competing suppliers and manufacturers to keep repair shops and vehicles running without a hitch.

B2B 86
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Girl Scouts Will Get The Chance To Earn Badges In Cyber Security

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Girl Scouts will soon get the chance to earn their first ever cyber security badges. The Huffington Post reports that Girl Scouts can earn the first of 18 cyber security Girl Scout badges beginning in September 2018. The program will reach as many as 1.8 million Girl Scouts in kindergarten through sixth grade and is being developed in a partnership between the Girl Scouts and Palo Alto Networks, a security company.

Maine 86
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Avoiding Lease Accounting Pitfalls in 2025: Lessons Learned from Spreadsheet Errors

Speaker: Abdi Ali, Sr. Lease Accounting Consultant

Join this insightful webinar with industry expert Abdi Ali, who will discuss the challenges that can arise from managing lease accounting with spreadsheets! He will share real-world examples of errors, compliance issues, and risks that may be present within your spreadsheets. Learn how these tools, while useful, can sometimes lead to inefficiencies that affect your time, resources, and peace of mind.

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Hive Project Taps Into Cryptocurrency For Invoice Finance

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The Hive Project, a company that uses cryptocurrency and Ethereum blockchain for trade financing , has launched its platform. The company announced Friday (June 30) that its portal is up and running to link SMEs to trade financing by turning unpaid invoices into tradable assets. Every invoice is assigned a unique fingerprint, the firm said, by tokenizing each bill and linking them onto the blockchain.

Finance 86
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Learning About Machine Learning  

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And now, the rise of the machines — or, at least, machine learning. This movement has been a long time coming, as artificial intelligence (AI) is moving ever-farther into real-world business applications where once it was too expensive (or too conceptual) to embrace. Through improving technology and decreasing costs, AI and Big Data are now combining to help firms in the financial sector prevent payments fraud.

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AI/BOTS: AI’s Impact on The Digital Retail Revolution

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The digital retail revolution is well underway. Fusing technology into in-store experiences has officially gone mainstream, and retailers are looking for ways to go beyond the traditional mobile app. As we’ve reported in the past, places like Sephora have installed various tablets with embedded augmented reality (AR) features to help customers pick and choose what makeup shades look best on their skin tone.

Retail 85
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Why savvy investors should focus on Kazakhstan (and other frontier markets)

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If I told you that you could travel back in time, to the end of the nineteenth century, and invest in a country that was recently war-torn, and in great transition, would you do it? You’d need to know that the government was primarily one ethnic group, but immigrants with different languages, customs, and religions were arriving in that country, at unprecedented levels, crowding the cities and looking for jobs.

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Back to Basics with Reconciliations

Join us in this webinar, where we share best practices on how to think about the reconciliation work each month, when best to do reconciliations, how they should be prepared, and some common pitfalls to avoid. Learning Objectives: This course objective is to understand how to properly prepare and review balance sheet reconciliations and its impact on the financial statements.

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Mastercard Begins Offering B2B Blockchain Tech

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On Friday (Oct. 20), Mastercard announced news that it will be opening up access to its blockchain technology through its developer’s API. Initially, the technology will be made available for B2B transactions, specifically to address the demands of cross-border payments. Mastercard is not the only firm delving into blockchain. The company joins Google, Overstock, Citi and Goldman Sachs in embracing the distributed ledger technology.

B2B 84
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Using AI And Machine Learning To Make Payments Faster, Safer

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What do track and field stars, NASCAR drivers and millions of businesses owners around the United States have in common? They all have an appreciation for speed. While more speed may mean more endorsement money for athletes, it means faster settlements and more efficient business for commercial banking customers. With a growth in demand, banks and FinTechs are working to give business owners the speed they need.

B2B 83
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Belk Works On Building Its New Legacy

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In some ways, Belk department store is the last of a dying breed — and not just because it is a department store in the United States in the year 2017. Small and regional — outside of the Southeastern United States, most people haven’t heard of it. But Belk may have something to teach its more nationalized equivalents, because it is doing something that its counterparts nationwide, by and large, are not.

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Mobile Commerce To Break $250B By 2020

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After something of a slow start, mobile eCommerce is set to make up half of all online sales by the year 2020 — worth nearly $250 billion annually. That forecast comes care of “A Mobile Mindset,” the second volume in the five-part series, “The 2017 UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper.” The UPS-backed report is derived from the input of over 5,189 comScore panelists who made at least two online purchases in a typical three-month period.

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Usage-Based Monetization Musts: A Roadmap for Sustainable Revenue Growth

Speaker: David Warren and Kevin O’Neill Stoll

Transitioning to a usage-based business model offers powerful growth opportunities but comes with unique challenges. How do you validate strategies, reduce risks, and ensure alignment with customer value? Join us for a deep dive into designing effective pilots that test the waters and drive success in usage-based revenue. Discover how to develop a pilot that captures real customer feedback, aligns internal teams with usage metrics, and rethinks sales incentives to prioritize lasting customer eng

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2017: The Year Of Digital Disruption For Payments

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A lot can happen in a year. What makes one stand out from another? How shall 2017 go down in the history books? Search Google for “2017: the year of…” and it becomes clear that many have seen this as a year of “death” and “disaster.” Others were not so quick to characterize it negatively, trawling the search engine instead for “the year of change.” Still others decided not to get philosophical about it at all, searching merely for “2017: the year of the rooster” or “the year of our Lord.”.

Gaming 81
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Why Regulation Won’t Fix Credit Reporting Agencies

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Some of the most memorable television commercials of the 1970s and 1980s were those promoting E. F. Hutton’s brokerage services. When its tagline, “When E. F. Hutton talks, people listen,” was spoken in those commercials, everyone in the room stopped, turned to look and listened with rapt attention to the person who uttered those words. The person speaking never revealed what E.

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At The POS Of The Future, Consumers Will Pay With Sound

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Sound travels at 767 miles per hour, so if you want a faster contactless payment, audio waves aren’t a bad vehicle for it. But harnessing audio waves for payments purposes is easier said than done, because it’s not like developing an app. It represents the development of a whole new technology, and reliability and security are just as important as speed — otherwise, this alternative payment method would be no better than the electronic payment methods that came before it.

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How APIs Are Fostering Collaboration Between FinTechs And Banks

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Banks and FinTech companies have a complicated history. To put it mildly, the two sides have not always worked harmoniously together. Why the tension? Both types of institutions contend for the same business in the competitive financial services world. While traditional banks offer a more established and tested set of products, the offerings of newer FinTech companies — such as real-time data, streamlined payments and quick notifications — are helping these new players encroach on banks’ t

B2B 80
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Harness the Potential of Your Enterprise Knowledge

The first Market Momentum Index: AI and Unstructured Data Management, conducted by Deep Analysis with support from AIIM and M-Files, surveyed 500 enterprises across various industries to assess their readiness to employ AI. The results reveal that AI is already far more embedded into organizations' operations than previously realized. These findings and more insights have been brought to you in the "Market Momentum Index: AI and Unstructured Data Management.

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EY To Use Blockchain For Auto Industry, Ride-Hailing Services

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Blockchain, the technology that makes cryptocurrency like bitcoin possible, is moving into the auto and ridesharing markets. According to a news report in Reuters , EY, the consulting unit of Ernst & Young Global, announced Wednesday (Aug. 30) it is launching a blockchain system that will let companies and/or individuals share vehicle ownership more easily.

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The Secret World Of APIs

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From an acronym known mostly by programmers in the early 2000s to something thousands of innovators have embraced to ignite numerous innovative solutions, it’s been an electric journey for the application program interface (API). According to David Koch, chief commercial officer at financial services provider FI.SPAN — a company that build an API-based platform to connect FinTechs and corporate customers to financial institutions (FIs) — APIs have unleashed an incredible number of opportunities

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MasterCard Brings Tap-To-Pay To Public Transit In 80+ Cities

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Just in time for the summer travel season, Mastercard has announced a series of partnerships in over 80 cities worldwide, which will enable card carriers to tap to pay for public transit. “With a Mastercard in their wallet, more and more people have a go-to transit pass for the city they’re in,” said Ian Slater, senior vice president, enterprise partnerships at Mastercard.

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Chatbot Tracker: Helping Productivity

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Chatbots have moved into a unique position over the past few years. Rather than using chatbots to resolve customer service issues solely on company websites or for inside use at organizations, businesses have begun branching out to help optimize both internal and external organizational needs. While chatbots may be traditionally thought of as the standard instant message chat windows, they have evolved to meet the needs of today’s fast-paced consumer.

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Solve Your Firm's Automation Complexities Once and For All

Speaker: Mark Stovel

When it comes to automating, many firms focus on finding the latest tech, believing that efficiency is something achieved through new tools. Yet true efficiency is achieved by delivering real value to clients, not merely by upgraded systems. Without a clear approach, no level of automation can overcome the complexities of serving every client’s needs.

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How A Bank And A FinTechs Are Jointly Cracking The Code On Financial Inclusion

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The favored narrative about banks and FinTech startups is generally not a love story. Usually, it is more of an all-out war story. Banks represent the old way of handling financial services – and in fairness, they carry a lot of responsibilities that deposit-taking institutions don’t necessarily have. Of course, banks have to be run with safety and soundness to protect those deposits, but they also have myriad public mandates, like fair lending, anti-money laundering and customer privacy.

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FinTech Startup Helps Millennials Plan For (And Afford) Their Future Family

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Kids these days. Millennials are using FinTech to pay back their college loans, cover healthcare expenses, and now, through FinTech startup Future Family , to get pregnant. More and more women are waiting until their 30s to have children. There are plenty of good reasons for that: millennials are getting married later, and having kids is expensive. But the biological clock waits for no woman.

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How Food And Retail Can Collaborate Via Blockchain

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Although many people equate blockchain technology with the banking and computer worlds, the technology is changing the food landscape as well. Companies like Walmart, Kroger and Nestle recently joined a partnership effort involving blockchain, signaling that the Internet of Things is making its way into Americans’ kitchens. But what hasn’t been so deeply explored is how that technology can help food producers and retail firms collaborate more deeply, helping both succeed and strengthening the in

Retail 79
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What API Standardization Could Mean For Payments Fraud

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API technology is opening new doors for the world of financial services, a trend that cultivates cooperation and collaboration between FinTechs and banks, once considered competitors. With the speed of payments accelerating and Same Day ACH initiatives continuing to roll out, NACHA has pulled together a group of industry experts to explore API standardization as a way to facilitate faster payment speeds and greater transaction security, among other use cases.

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Travel and Expense Policy Success: Your Essential Checklist

Setting the stage for successful organizational change always begins with clear, thoughtful communication. When it comes to rolling out a new travel and expense (T&E) policy, establishing a well-structured communication plan is key to ensuring that all employees understand the changes and their impact. By following a step-by-step approach, you can guide your organization through the transition, fostering smooth adoption from the outset and improving compliance.